Music as Meditation

This is not from New Ageville ... it's just a personal experience. I close my eyes most of the time when I play and leave them that way unless I have a difficult passage as in the tune below (in time it will also yield). There are times when I play, where the "I" disappears and there is just what is ... I know this is true because when I get caught by a thought and come back, I know I was there, where-ever there was. I am completely unaware of being there when I'm there, in the normal sense of the word ... there is awareness ... but I only know there was when I get distracted.

Anyway, just a few thoughts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2upCRZlhnQ

Ha! It usually drives me nuts Ian!

Somehow I have become terrible at just listening to music at least 90% of the time, my CD collection gathers dust.

I could make music all day and sometimes do (for me it is a cappella choral singing in a small group that does it - take a lookee here - and usually I could sit and listen to live musicians making music all day too. But reproduced music I start to feel the red mist descending after a while.

Part of it is because I don't like music in the background, it has to have my full attention. Maybe part of it is that professional performances seem somehow "too perfect" to me to be real.

That's really interesting Iain. I don't like background music either, and my CD collection is in about the same shape as yours. For me it's become much more of a reference library.

IanPatton wrote:

This is not from New Ageville ... it's just a personal experience. I close my eyes most of the time when I play and leave them that way unless I have a difficult passage as in the tune below (in time it will also yield). There are times when I play, where the "I" disappears and there is just what is ... I know this is true because when I get caught by a thought and come back, I know I was there, where-ever there was. I am completely unaware of being there when I'm there, in the normal sense of the word ... there is awareness ... but I only know there was when I get distracted.

I know this is an old thread but just wanted to add that the same thing happens to me when I play the drums (djembe, bodhran, shamanic).